Saturday, 14 March 2015

This is what I wrote two years ago. There is very little I can add. I am tremendously privileged to have a research leave every seventh term, just about once in two years.

I don't have a book project this time, but I have several large and difficult chapters that I agreed to write long ago in moments of weakness, hoping that something would come in between. As usual, it hasn't, so THE TIME HAS COME. For some inexplicable reason, I am giving three keynote talks at conferences in the nearest future and for two of these I only have a vague idea of what I am doing. All in all, the amount of text I have to generate will add up to a book.Therefore I need to plan carefully.

In the next few weeks I will have to grade last term's papers. I will try to do it as soon as possible to take it off my mind. Doctoral supervision is not affected by research leaves so any moment a draft may land in my computer, anything from a chapter section to a finished thesis. I will deal with it when it comes.

The graduate admissions are almost done for this round, and I don't have to attend meetings. My diary is wonderfully empty except for some dinners with good friends or visits from grandchildren.

Soon it will be warm enough to dig in the garden, and my physiotherapeut has mended my shoulder. I am building a gorgeous dollhouse. Can life get any better?

Wednesday, 11 March 2015

I have been in doubt whether to
share this experience. It is far too personal. But there are people out
there who will have been through something similar, and you, my dear
reader, can experience it one day, or your loved one. This is a kind
of thing that we know happens but “it cannot happen to me”.

Let me tell you: it can.

Since I am alive to tell the story it
obviously had a positive outcome, but most of it is my
reconstruction based on what I have been told. What I remember is
bizarre, as dreams are, and unless I had evidence of a plastic
hospital ID-band (and, presumably, a record sent to my doctor), I
might believe that I have dreamed it all.

What I know for sure is that last
Sunday I went out for dinner with a colleague visiting Cambridge. The
day before, we worked on our joint paper. Staffan drove me to the
restaurant, picking up G from her place on the way. I remember
ordering, and I remember the canapés and the amuse-bouche. I
remember we talked about taking a cooking course in Italy.
I eventually remembered, on prompt, that we discussed G's son's
scholarly plans. The next couple of hours is a second-hand narrative.
Apparently, we had a lovely meal, except that one course contained
peanuts, which I had firmly told the waiter I didn't want because I
had eaten this course previously, and although I am not allergic to
peanuts the taste was too strong for the delicacy of the rest. There
were two desserts, and apparently I liked one of them better than the
other. G paid the bill, as agreed, the restaurant called us a taxi,
we chatted and made plans for meeting on Tuesday afternoon to work
further on our paper. G got off at her place, and I continued.

There is no clear evidence of the
following, but I got home, supposedly paid the taxi and opened the
door with my key.

Staffan's evidence is that I was
cheerful, telling him about the meal, including sending the peanut
dish back to the kitchen. According to him, I changed into sleeping
gear, presumably brushed my teeth, took my pills and went to bed.

Next, some hours later, he heard me
calling from the bathroom. He says I was lying on the floor, with my
legs in the bathroom and the rest of me in the corridor. I could not
get up, but, he says, told him quite soberly to call an ambulance.
When we arrived at the hospital, I was asked lots of questions to
which I, Staffan says, replied coherently and accurately, in the
right language. Among other things, they asked me when the Second
World War started. They took blood tests, blood pressure, ran me
through brain scan, did all kinds of tests. Everything was fine. Only
I don't remember anything of this.

As I said, dreams are bizarre, and I
dreamed I was in an ambulance, but I had been inside an ambulance,
although not as patient, so I wasn't at all perplexed. The
ambulance was going back and forth between home and hospital, and I
thought it was fortunate that we live so close to the hospital. (We
don't. We live on the opposite side of town from the hospital. My work is close to the hospital). I dreamed that I was lying
on the floor in a hallway of an unfamiliar apartment, and again, I
wasn't surprised because that's the kind of things you dream. It
wasn't in any way an unpleasant dream so I wasn't eager to wake up. I
dreamed somebody asked me to look up and down and left and right, and
this is exactly what my optician had done last Saturday so it was
quite logical to dream it, although in the dream it wasn't my
optician but some weird figure from a horror movie. I dreamed I was
telling people around me that I was in withdrawal because, close
after kidney stones, medical withdrawal is the worst experience I
have ever had in my life, and I was very anxious that they gave me my
pill. I also dreamed that I was in a euthanasia clinic in Holland, as
described in Ian McEwan's novel Amsterdam, and that people
around me were just hallucinations caused by lethal drugs. I wasn't
particularly upset about it because in the dream it was all properly
pre-arranged. I dreamed they pushed me into a tunnel for brain scan,
but in the dream I knew it had happened many years ago in Stockholm,
so I wasn't worried. There was something else I was worried about in
connection with the brain scan, possibly that I would get lost in the
corridors – just as you do in dreams. I was worried that they would
forget to bring me out of that tunnel. I dreamed I was wearing my
blue fluffy slippers and wondered why. I dreamed I was dizzy and
thirsty and had to use the bathroom. I frequently dream that I have
to use the bathroom and cannot find it, or the toilet disappears
just as I am about to sit down. Therefore I wasn't at all surprised
when they moved me from the bed I was lying on to a chair with a
hole. It's just the kind of thing you dream. (I checked with Staffan
later – it happened). I was anxious that I had to attend a
symposium (which had been last Friday). I often dream that I am at a conference and don't know what I am supposed to speak about. I was also anxious to know
why G was in Cambridge because it didn't make sense, but then of
course it was just a dream. I was still begging for my pill, but they
told me I should take it in the evening, as usual. I said it was
evening and I had to take my pill. I continued insisting that I was
in withdrawal and therefore dizzy. Someone without a face told me I
was getting anti-dizziness injections which I found pleasurable. I
was not at all surprised that I was in hospital, but I was surprised
that I was wearing my bathrobe and fluffy slippers. Yet this is
exactly what happens in dreams: you dream you are in front of
students in a lecture hall wearing a bathrobe and slippers. I was
embarrassed because my nightgown sleeves were frayed. Also, the world
was blurry (Staffan had not brought my glasses). They told me I could
go home soon, and I thought it was fortunate that we lived so close
to the hospital. There was no sudden awakening and realisation that I
had been dreaming; everything was clear and logical. I asked Staffan what day and time it was. I got scared. I wasn't sure what had happened and what had
been a dream. I kept asking the same questions over and over again until he told me, mildly, to shut up.

I read some work on memory studies for
my recent research project, and what I know is that every time we
retrieve a stored memory it gets arbitrarily connected to something
else, real or fictional, and stored again in a distorted form. It is
therefore pointless to try to remember. What I may now think I
remember can just as well be a false memory prompted by something I
have been told. Let's face it: I have a total memory gap of fifteen
hours during which people around me perceived me as rational and
coherent.

They think I fell and hurt my head.
It's a theory as good as any other. Why did I fall in the first
place? They think I had an ear infection. But all tests were normal.

“Humans are suddenly mortal”
(Bulgakov). Yet another reminder of your own mortality is never
pleasant, but it is also a reminder of utter vulnerability. I didn't
do anything wrong to cause my fall. I cannot prevent it happening
again.

This very moment I should have been on
a plane to Bergen, Norway, going to a conference that I had been very
much looking forward to. It is not the first time I have to cancel
conference participation at short notice. I never learn. But it is
the first time I have experienced amnesia. I don't like it.

Conclusion: once again, appreciate the
time you have, because you don't know when it may run out. Value
people around you who spend the night in hospital beside you in an
uncomfortable chair. Reconsider your priorities. And make sure your
nightgown is not frayed.

Tuesday, 3 March 2015

Last week we had a
very distinguished guest speaker, Juliet Dusinberre, the author of
Alice to the Lighthouse,
one of the best critical studies of children's literature, written
almost thirty years ago. She talked about Beatrix Potter, and this
talk very nearly made me change my mind, once again, about the value
of biographical information for literary studies. I didn't know much
about Beatrix Potter beyond basic facts (I guess, most of them from
the movie, Miss Potter), and the letters and diaries that Juliet
spoke about were really illuminating. One of our students wrote an excellent blog post about this talk, so I won't repeat it.

What struck me,
however, was the similarity of Potter's life and struggle to her
contemporary, the Swedish Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf. Once
upon a time I was a Lagerlöf scholar (published a book and several
articles), and even then I wasn't interested in her biography, and
even then I was wrong because there were many facts in her life that
were reflected in her writing and therefore worth knowing. For
instance, the loss – or threat of loss – of the childhood home
surfaces in all her novels. When she got the Prize – first female
writer ever to receive it – she bought back her father's estate,
and, much like Potter, kept buying adjacent land and expanding
farming. As rich and famous, she still had to challenge her male
fellow writers and was often referred to as "fairy tale auntie".
Unlike Potter, she wrote novels, but she also wrote one book for
children that is, at least internationally, better known than her
novels, The Wonderful Adventures of
Nils. Among many remarkable things she
does in this book, commissioned as a geography textbook, she is a
passionate animal rights promoter. Could she be familiar with Beatrix
Potter's books? Possibly. Could Potter have read Nils?
It was translated into English early. Does it matter? Not really.

Of the many famous words
by Lagerlöf, my favourite is from her diary: "Today I sold
twenty sacks of flour and a short story". That could have been
Beatrix Potter.

Sunday, 1 March 2015

After I finished FiveChildren on the Western Front I couldn't help thinking about the
allusion, and I decided to re-read Remarque. As It turned out, it was
one of those books that you believe you have read when you actually
haven't. I know I read Three Comrades as teenager, and
possibly The Black Obelisk because I remember the cover of the
book in Russian. But apparently I had not read All Quiet on the
Western Front, and I am glad I hadn't because I know I wouldn't
have liked it and wouldn't have understood much. It is a slow read,
and when you are young you have no patience for slow reads. It must
be something neuroscientists still have to explain, but teenage
brains just cannot cope with slow and deep reading.

But now I am mature
enough and in the right mood to enjoy this wonderful and terrible
book which I haven't seen mentioned a lot in the centenary
discussions. I also see clearly where Kate Saunders has got her ideas
from. Although of course for the English soldiers it wasn't the Western front. It was the one and only front.

It is hard to believe that All Quiet on the Western Front
was written so long ago. It
feels as if it was written today. First-person, present tense. And a
disturbingly postmodern ending.

I
also thought that today it might have been marketed as a Young Adult
novel – the protagonist is nineteen – but YA didn't exist then.
And the novel is exactly about being forced from childhood into
adulthood. And the author lets the protagonist die rather than grow
up disillusioned.

It
was an extraordinary reading experience and completely serendipitous.